Mitchell Award Committee Member

ADVISORY BOARD Member

Education

PhD

A couple of years ago, Dr. Hal S. Stern, the head of the Department of Statistics at the University of California-Irvine, wrote an article in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports "advocating a boycott of the Bowl Championship Series by all quantitative analysts."Stern argued that statisticians shouldn't want anything to do with the "computer rankings" that are an element of the BCS system.

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"It is," wrote Stern, "generally a bad idea for quantitative analysts to remove themselves from the decision-making process," but there are also times that, to preserve your self-respect, you pick up the briefcase and walk out of the room.

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In truth, my objections to the system are a little different than Stern's.
His biggest objection, I think, is No. 4 aboveâ€"that the BCS system is used to justify something that should not be justified.

In the current issue of Chance, statistician Hal S. Stern of Iowa State University in Ames takes a look at what sort of simple information may be helpful for identifying winning teams, though not necessarily for making bets that beat the spread (or odds)."The question of primary interest is what proportion of game outcomes could be correctly predicted by an intelligent observer," Stern says.

Stern focuses mainly on U.S. professional sports, though the analysis can be easily applied to other sports, as long as the right sorts of data are available.

One simple prediction rule is to pick that team that plays at home."This rule ought not to predict very well because it completely ignores the relative ability of the teams that are competing," Stern remarks.

Nonetheless, the evidence supports the existence of a home-field advantage (see table), especially in basketball.Moreover, the home-field advantage for college sports appears to be slightly larger than for professional sports, Stern says.